Tag Archives: Brand Photo Contests

The Prehistoric Way to Run Photo Contests (Vs. The Pongr Way)

Photo Contest Ideas, Photo Marketing Widgets, Photo Sharing | by

    What were photo contests like for your parents? No need to speculate. They looked exactly like this. (Double click to enlarge).

    I’ve been in the process of digitizing my family photo archives, a laborious process of sorting through shoeboxes of tattered prints and slides — but also a journey of AMAZING discoveries. Like the photographic relic above.

    This is what photo contests looked like back in the Summer of 1968. I found this entry form — which I assume was never mailed in — in a box of unorganized slides that hadn’t been touched in at least 30 years. I never even knew this box existed (so go see what your parents might be storing in the attic).

    Here are the steps my father took to take his shot at fame and glory…

    THE PREHISTORIC WAY OF ENTERING PHOTO CONTESTS

    1. Buy slide film at Zayre’s, a discount department store similar to Kmart. (We miss you, Zayre’s!)
    2. Take photos you think will impress the contest judges.
    3. Get slides developed at Zayre’s, which at the time usually took 7-10 days.
    4. Drive to Zayre’s to pick up your pics.
    5. Fill out an entry form and mail it to Minnesota.
    6. Wait by your mailbox for news about the winner.

    I’m always curious about What Might Have Been so I scanned my dad’s scenic entry.

    Did Dad ever win that 1968 Dynachrome Photo Contest? He never found out…. because he forgot to send in his entry!

    It’s not a bad shot. Well framed. Love the juxtaposition of dirt, gravel, asphalt, grass and mountains. I have no idea what his competition might have been, so I’m not going to judge his selection.  But I do know this: Thank Heavens for the Pongr Way.

    THE PONGR WAY OF ENTERING PHOTO CONTESTS
    1. SNAP — Take a pic with your mobile phone.
    2. SEND — Email or picture text to (brandname)@pongr.com
    3. INSTANT GRATIFICATION — Get an immediate direct response by email or text letting you know if you won, are still eligible to win, or you may receive an exclusive offer only for contest participants.

    Make no mistake about it, the Pongr Way is not the way most brands, businesses and bloggers are running their photo contests (yet). Many Facebook and blog-based contests still involve a laborious process — perhaps even as time consuming as the snail mail method.

    Consider all the work that a social media manager must do to currently keep track of photo contest entries and to display them. Photos sent in by email or posted on the Facebook page must be curated, sorted, categorized and constantly updated.

    Pongr’s free Photo Widget tools does all that for you and presents everything in a live streaming gallery that your business would otherwise have to pay a developer to create.

    Check out how Miles High, a start-up organic clothing and lifestyle brand, recently used the Pongr Photo Widgets to automate their fan photos and run an ongoing series of contests.

    In addition to using their Pongr brand page for managing photo contests, businesses can also embed Pongr’s live streaming photo gallery on their own Website using our free customized widget tools.  Double click to sort Miles High fan photos by Most Recent or Most Votes on the clothing company’s embedded Pongr gallery.

    Want to run your next photo contest the Pongr way?  Please drop us a line at dgarnick@pongr.com and share what you’re up to!

    Shopper Marketing: UNREAL Candy Celebrates Target Partnership With $10K Sweepstakes

    Brand Photo-Sharing Games, Featured Posts, Pongr Contests, Shopper Marketing | by

      PLAY FOOD — It’s amazing how long a few UNREAL candies can keep a baby amused. Photo credit: Douglas L. (Double click for more candid UNREAL baby pics)

      Happiness is… eating candy with your feet?

      For this youngster, it’s just as enjoyable to play with UNREAL Candy as it is to eat it. UNREAL began as a family project — a 13-year-old boy asking his dad, “Why does the junk food we love have to be so bad for us?” — so it’s only fitting that the start-up brand’s first photo contest would generate tons of fun family moments.

      To celebrate its nationwide distribution in Target Stores, UNREAL is giving away a $10,000 Target shopping spree as the grand prize in its “Unjunk Your 2013 Sweepstakes.” Ten additional winners will receive a year’s worth of UNREAL Candy.

      To enter, UNREAL fans need to snap a pic of the candy — or preferably of themselves, family or friends enjoying the candy — and email it or picture-text it to unreal@pongr.com. Aside from the customary kids with chocolately faces, shoppers have been getting extremely creative with their contest entries. Here are a few unexpected gems:

      1. An UNREAL parakeet.
      2. Cute dolls with a preference for candy made without artificial ingredients or preservatives.
      3. A unicorn who loves candy that has a low glycemic index.*
      4. Spelling the futuristic UNREAL logo with candy-coated chocolates.
      5. Balancing UNREAL on a pregnant tummy!
      6. UNREAL school teachers.

      The asterisked unicorn entry was done by a fan with a chroma key and green screen, an additional effort that’s appreciated but not necessary to enter the contest. The beauty of all Pongr-powered photo contests is that there is a very low “Snap and Send” barrier for participation. No apps to download. No codes to scan.

      “Our big challenge is how do you capture taste in a photo?” asks Alan Ringvald, UNREAL Candy’s head of digital and social media. “We’re trying to prove our unjunked candy tastes just as good without any of the bad stuff in it.”

      UNREAL has been giving away tons of free candy samples each month, sharing the sweetness at art festivals, street fairs, concerts, sporting events, college campus and 5K races. New York’s recent Jingle Ball concert with Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber was also joined by four UNREAL “Morph Men,” silent Blue Man Group-like creatures who surprised fans with UNREAL treats.

      But the next best thing to actually eating candy is showing the world how much fun candy can be — and that’s where the photo contest comes into play.

      “Picture sharing is booming,” Ringvald says. “Photos are all about instant gratification, and we’re hoping people will want to share some of their most enjoyable UNREAL moments.”

      “The Pongr system is just so easy for our customers to use,” he adds. “It’s streamlined for sharing on Facebook and Twitter and it’s a great way for people to interact up close with the product.”

      HERE I AM!  To kick off its distribution of UNREAL, Target has been showcasing the product on end cap displays in all of its U.S. stores. Photo credit: Arnold F. (Double click to see other Target shoppers discovering their favorite candy).

      Amidst the piles of smiles being collected in the photo contest, UNREAL is making an astonishing pitch for a consumer brand. The company wants you to enjoy their candy, but not too much of it.

      The year’s supply of candy is worth $500, roughly enough for a few bags each week.

      “We don’t want people to gorge on candy — any candy, even ours,” says Ringvald. “We want you to unjunk with a reasonable amount.”

      That message coincides with the company’s insistence that its customers eat more of nature’s candy, i.e., fruit, on all of its nutritional comparison charts on the Web.

      FASHIONABLE CANDY — Fruitella 14′s funky fingernail polish complements UNREAL’s colorful packaging! (Double click for the full Pongr UNREAL Photo Gallery)

      UNREAL’s commitment to providing a better candy option makes it a natural pitch to mom bloggers, who are a big part of the company’s promotion effort. Bloggers who are sharing the 2013 Sweepstakes have asked their readers to hashtag their blog name in the Pongr photo gallery.

      “We’re a small part of a much bigger movement,” says Ringvald. “We believe in sourcing ingredients responsibly and improving nutrition rather than to sacrifice quality for cost.”

      UNREAL has been promoting its Pongr-powered photo contest on its Facebook page and through outreach to mom blogger networks. (Double click for your chance to win before January 20.)

      You can find UNREAL Candy at Target, Staples, CVS, Michaels, Market Basket, BJs, Tedeschi Food Shops and other fine stores.

      (Hungry? To find the nearest UNREAL Candy retail location, click here.)

      Behind The Scenes: How Miles High Clothing Set Up Their Sticker Photo Contest

      Brand Ambassadors, Photo Marketing Widgets, Pongr Contests | by

        STANDING OUT: Miles High Clothing gave its outreach campaign a stylized look by hand stamping every envelope.

        Why use the U.S. Postal Service and rubber stamps to promote a mobile photo contest?

        It’s not surprising that start-up company Miles High is embracing snail mail and a nostalgic printing method to promote their sticker contest. Heck, these are the same guys who chose an antique airplane as their logo!

        The premise of their “Earn Your Wings” contest is to have fans photograph their logo in the highest places in the world. It’s a fitting theme since the wool from their Alpaca sweaters comes from mountainous Ecuador.

        Pongr Tools You Can Use: The Contest Leader Board Widget

        Brand Ambassadors, Photo Marketing Widgets | by

          Is Winning Within Her Reach?

          As demonstrated by Miles High Clothing, Pongr’s new free Photo Marketing Widgets help small businesses, nonprofit groups, community organizations and bloggers run automated direct-response photo contests. You’d have to hire your own team of developers to run your photo sharing campaigns so smoothly!

          Competition breeds creativity.

          Miles High is asking its fans to “Earn Your Wings” by photographing its logo sticker “in the highest place they can be.”  The challenge is both literal and metaphorical as brand enthusiasts are bringing the stickers in airplanes, the tops of mountains, on the sides of cliffs, but also to places that personally symbolize achievement.

          We love this pic of a dad and his little girl reaching for success.

          Pongr Tools You Can Use: The Live Photo Streaming Widget

          Photo Marketing Widgets, Social Media | by

            Pongr's free Live Photo Streaming Widget. (Click the image to enlarge)

            As demonstrated by Miles High Clothing, Pongr’s new free Photo Marketing Widgets help small businesses, nonprofit groups, community organizations and bloggers run automated direct-response photo contests. You’d have to hire your own team of developers to run your photo sharing campaigns so smoothly!

            With the Live Photo Streaming Gallery embedded on your Web site, your fan photo album becomes a real-time snapshot of what your customers are doing and thinking.

            When fans email or picture-text their mobile photos (uploading from the desktop works too), they instantly enter the live stream where community members can “like” a photo or leave comments.

            You can determine prizes based on Pongr’s reward points system (points for submitting pics, sharing them and attracting “likes”) or decide not to relinquish control to the masses and base winners on creativity. In either case, the rating system will generally push the cream to the top for you to evaluate.

            Pongr Tools You Can Use: The Fan Mapping Widget

            Photo Marketing Widgets, Pongr Contests, Social Media | by

              As demonstrated by Miles High Clothing, Pongr’s new free Photo Marketing Widgets help small businesses, nonprofit groups, community organizations and bloggers run automated direct-response photo contests. You’d have to hire your own team of developers to run your photo sharing campaigns so smoothly!

              Yes, photo contests are fun. They provide hours of amusement as you get to look at babies, puppies and unicorns hopping over rainbows with your product.

              But just collecting fan photos has little lasting business value if you just slap the pictures on a page and forget about them. It’s vital to know who your customers are in order to build ongoing RELATIONSHIPS.